ENVIRONMENT: New Map Highlights Conservation Priorities

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 3 1997 (IPS) - Governments, citizens, and corporations must intensify efforts to conserve more than 200 eco-regions which are home to more than 80 percent of the world’s known plant and animal species, according to a survey released here Thursday.

Unveiling its ‘Global 200’ list of the world’s most critical major habitats, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned that threats posed to biodiversity in every part of the world today go beyond individual species to encompass whole regions.

“We’re on the verge of having entire habitats around the world disappear,” said WWF president Kathryn Fuller. “The key to saving life on earth is saving the diversity of habitats on earth.”

The new survey, which includes 232 eco-regions covering all of the world’s continents, is the latest in a series of efforts by major international environmental groups to set priorities for global conservation.

In February, Conservation International (CI) unveiled its map of 17 biodiversity “hotspots” which it said required urgent international conservation.

CI’s hotspots, which cover less than two percent of the earth’s land surface but support as much as half of the world’s total biodiversity, are concentrated in tropical areas of South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. But they also include the eastern Mediterranean area and the Cape and western Cape regions of southern Africa. Selection of the hotspots was determined primarily by the number of plant species found there.

In another study released last month, the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) released a map of the world’s remaining “frontier forests” — relatively untouched woodlands which are sufficiently large and intact to provide a safe haven for all of their indigenous species to survive indefinitely without human intervention.

That map, which covers both temperate and tropical regions, aims to show that only eight countries — Brazil, Canada, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Russia, Suriname, and Venezuela — have enough original forest left to ensure their long-term survival if appropriate conservation measures are taken.

Another 28 countries — including the United States, most of Central America, India, the southern Andes, parts of West Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia — still have substantial amounts of original forests left but almost no time to protect them, given current rates of deforestation.

The WWF map takes a new tack. It aims to focus conservation efforts on a range of habitats that are “representative” of all of the world’s major ecosystems.

“While it is true that more than half of all species are likely to occur in tropical, moist forests around the world, the other 50 percent of all species cannot be found in tropical moist forests,” notes the study on which the new map is based. “To conserve the latter half, we must emphasise the importance of conserving a full representation of the world’s diverse ecosystems.”

Thus, the map features almost 100 freshwater and marine eco- regions as well as terrestrial habitats. It also includes regions that are relatively weak in biodiversity but which nonetheless support unique or endemic species. Habitats which offer certain unique biological processes, such as waystations for migrating birds, also find their way into the survey.

Tundra, temperate broadleaf forests, mangroves, freshwater lakes and rivers, and even caves “contain species assemblages adapted to distinct environmental conditions and reflect different evolutionary histories,” according to the WWF study. “To lose representative examples of these assemblages would be an incalculable loss at the global scale.”

The WWF map incorporates all of the “hotspots” included in the CI survey, as well as the frontier forests cited by WRI. But it includes many more parts of Africa, the southern cone of South America, Central and Southeast Asia, and North America.

It also includes 35 freshwater eco-regions and 61 marine habitats covering much of Antarctica and hugging most of the coastlines of the Pacific Basin, the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas, northeastern North America, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The 136 sensitive terrestrial areas cover almost half of the world’s land surface and touch virtually every country in the world. Notable exceptions include Uruguay, several Sahelian countries in Africa, and parts of Eastern Europe.

Of the terrestrial habitats, the most diverse include the Western Arc forests of the Amazon Basin followed closely by the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, the Choco-Darien area of northwestern South America and forested parts of Malaysia and Borneo, according to the report.

Praising the recent decision of Panamanian President Ernesto Perez Balladares to block completion of the Pan-American Highway, WWF says the move will save millions of hectares of rare rainforest in the Choco-Darien region which is home to more species of birds than any place on earth.

The most diverse and distinctive dry forests in the world are found in Mexico, Bolivia, and Madagascar. The richest and most distinctive temperate forests are in central China, eastern North America, as well as the Caucasus, the Himalayas, and the Russian Far East. The Chihuahuan and central Mexican deserts are the world’s richest in desert plants, although the flora of southwestern Africa is also particularly rich and distinctive, according to the study.

The eco-region approach to conservation is not without its critics. Some scientists who favour the hotspot approach argue that WWF’s method is too ambitious and risks diffusing conservation budgets and efforts.

But WWF argues that casting such a broad net should build political support. “The broad geographic reach of the Global 200 makes almost every nation on Earth a stakeholder in a global conservation strategy,” the report says.

“The greater recognition of the distribution of globally outstanding biodiversity among development organisations can help investors better recognise and mitigate the effects of projects, or carefully consider the wisdom of development in particularly important and sensitive eco-regions,” WWF argues.